From the Walls of the Disciple
by petty102
Summary: In a forgotten cave are scrawled parables, written in the blood of ancients. This is the story of the Signless.
1. Chapter 1

The jadebloods tended to the Mother Grub who brooded in underground caverns where the lusii were born. The duties of the jadebloods included aiding the mother as she laid her eggs, taking the eggs somewhere safe to hatch and pupate, and ensuring the newly pupated children faced difficult trials to survive before they could find their lusus and live on the surface. Porrim Maryam accepted her fate as a jadeblood, and she relegated herself to the duties of her caste.

She paced down the stone corridor, kicking aside empty cocoons and stepping over dead larval trolls ravaged by hungry lusii. Most of them were the lower castes, the warmbloods, with blood colored like rust or dirt or the dead yellow of thirsty weeds. They were always born in great hordes, and they all died in swarms. Most never made it out of the caverns.

This season, the Dark season's first winter, the wrigglers were just beginning to pupate. The lowbloods would hatch by first spring, the midbloods by second spring, and the highbloods by third. Porrim liked first winter. The wrigglers stopped screaming.

She approached the Mother Grub's brooding cavern, carefully bowing her head under low-hanging wreaths to keep her horns from getting tangled in them. As she straightened, she saw a few of the other jadebloods congregated around something small.

"What is it?" She heard someone hiss.

"Is there something wrong with the Mother Grub?"

"That's a disgusting mutation."

"Is it dead?"

Porrim drifted over to the gathering. On the floor was a larval troll whose carapace was a lurid red, far off the bottom of the hemospectrum. It was limp. It didn't seem to be breathing.

"Just kick it to the side and let the lusii deal with it."

"It's not some sort of seadweller, is it?"

"It's bright, but it's still red — it can't be a seadweller."

"Leave it alone, we have work to do."

The other jadebloods began to wander away. Someone gave the little grub a kick in the gut, so that it skidded across the stone floor to the wall.

It gave a tiny mewl.

Porrim glanced around; everyone else ignored it. Quietly, trying not to draw attention to herself, she drifted over to the wall and knelt beside the mutant.

Its eyes were closed, but there was a tiny flutter in its chest. It was still alive.

She felt pity for the little thing. To have to struggle to live was a familiar concept to all trollkind, but the audacity to do so was not one many were equipped with. She'd seen the corpses of children who'd failed to complete their trials. She pitied those children too.

And what would this thing face if it lived? It would pupate into an even more disgusting being; its trials would be more trying for its mutation; it would never find a lusus to share that blood color, so it would have to raise itself — and even after all that, it would still be a pariah, and persecuted by the Empress's guards to the ends of the galaxy. No good would come of this thing's life. She pitied it.

She poised one hand on its shoulder and the other on its cheek, preparing to snap its neck with a quick movement. Its eyes fluttered, and it nuzzled against her palm. She hesitated.

She picked it up. Its head lolled. Had she imagined it? She put her palm to its cheek, and again it nuzzled her. Must be a reflex so trolls don't strangle wrigglers. She dug her fingers into it and started twisting its neck.

It mewled again, its tiny eyebrows pulling together and its eyes fluttering open. Almost against her will she relaxed her hands and watched its eyelids settle back and its eyebrows ease.

She stood up, holding it, though not quite letting it touch her body. It licked its lips dreamily and sighed. She saw a bruise forming under its carapace where it had been kicked. She ran her fingers over the injury — it felt almost feverish. Rustbloods ran hot, so a mutant surely must run hotter.

It cooed at her cool fingertips. She pulled her hand away a moment, then pressed it back against the bruise — lightly, just so it could feel her hand. It chirped, and opened its eyes a bit.

They were sweet.

Porrim didn't know what to make of her sudden instinct to thrust the small creature into her cloak and carry it somewhere safe. She acted on it anyways.

…

Jadebloods don't leave the cavern.

…

Porrim forged her way through the desert in the day, when other trolls were forced to cower from the blistering Alternian sun. She, however, suffered a rare defect that allowed her to survive the light, and as such she found a small cave to hide in during the night. The little mutant did not wake nor stir in the day, but as the sun sank, it began to squirm and fuss in her arms.

Porrim pressed her back against the farthest side of the cave as she undid her cloak and to look at her transgression. It was struggling to open its eyes, fighting against sleep and death. It pulled together its eyebrows and screwed up its mouth

It hiccuped out its first cry. The second was drowned out by a gasp. On its third try, the wriggler coughed out a tiny ear-spitting scream.

Seized by terror at the noise, Porrim pulled him against her chest to muffle the sound. It did not stop. She threw the cloak over her stolen wriggler and searched her mind for anything she could think of to soothe it.

Her lusus — what did she do when Porrim couldn't sleep? Her lusus would make that noise, that little — hum.

She tried to imitate that little noise. She pressed her lips together and sang a little, a slight buzz in her throat. The wriggler still cried. She hummed louder, and held it closer to her. It stopped its cry to breathe, and while it gasped, she brought it up to her neck and hummed a little louder yet.

It still fussed a bit, but it was soothed for the most part. She quieted her humming and found herself rocking it even, an utterly unnatural thing for an adult to find instinctual.

When it had quieted completely, its eyes opened. It looked up at her with sleepy curiosity.

She smiled a little sadly. Those eyes would fill with his mutant red one day, and he would never be able to hide the color of his blood. Yet, despite that, despite his inevitable suffering, despite her inevitable execution once she was found out, despite the millions who'd endure the wrath of the Empress when she caught wind of this small rebellion brewing, it was important. In some small way, this little wriggler was important.

Porrim held her tiny insurrection. Kankri, she named him, meaning only. He had no blood type, and therefore his last name was Vantas, meaning dark. Something in her chest hurt for him.

"You're a special one alright," she murmured to her mutant.

Kankri smiled and gurgled back.

…

Her absence from the caverns did not go unnoticed. She saw them in the distance, across the moonswept desert, the forms of the approaching cobalt-blooded sentries come to put her in her place. As of yet, none seems to have noticed her crime of taking a wriggler, or else the hunt would surely be more than a small party of brutish bluebloods searching haphazardly through the night. Still, they were a danger to her and her Kankri, so once she saw them, she stole away with him after daybreak and ran somewhere else to hide.

She lost them after this last break. The sentries gave up looking for her, waiting instead for her to come crawling back to the caverns, starving and shaking in withdrawal from sopor. And she did almost give in a few times, for when it was not the constant aching of her head and itching under her skin, it was the nightmares that came relentlessly in the absence of sopor. Her people all slept in sopor for a reason, and it was to stifle the terrifying bloodlust plaguing Alternian dreams.

But as she laid awake, cradling her mutant and watching his eyelids flutter, she was grateful he didn't suffer as she did. He couldn't know the touch of sopor, so he couldn't crave it like she did. She admired his courage daring to sleep dry, and she wished for his independence.

As the nights passed over the Alternian deserts, she soon had another fear — Kankri seemed to be fast approaching his pupation.

A mutant such as he should surely deviate from any semblance of an ordinary maturity timeline, so Porrim had no standard by which to measure his growth. Caring for wrigglers was finicky, but no more difficult than tending to the mother grub: soft foods in the evening and morning, liquids about twice as often, and sleep through most of the day. Kankri proved to be especially fussy for a wriggler, spitting up this or that which Porrim ground up for his sensitive little mouth, refusing nectar and water in their own forms preferring instead to suck on a damp corner of Porrim's cloak. He always slept too soundly, and Porrim often woke him when she feared his stillness too close to death.

Still, his appetite had been growing in ferocity and his sleeping grew troubled, sure harbingers of pupation. His breathing was sometimes erratic, and his hot skin was growing hotter — feverish, even, she dared to guess. She did not know what to do but hold him against her cool body and let him suck water from the corner of her cloak. Soon, he was throwing up half of what he ate. His skin grew taut and his lips dried out. His tiny dull horns became flimsy, scaly, and once in a while she would find flakes of them in his dark curly hair.

It was only about a perigee before he pupated. She woke up and found his sickly red cocoon inexpertly weaved against the wall of that day's cave. She was afraid to touch it, should she break it and he spill out with half-formed limbs and gasping undersized lungs.

Waiting should not have been a problem, but Porrim soon saw that the hunting party had given up waiting for her, and were again seeking her. Her transgression must have been found out, some spiteful jadeblood noticing the mutant went missing when Porrim did and tipping off the bluebloods to get them to leave.

She panicked. She knew very little about surviving in the wild, and she knew too much about the dangers of moving a cocoon from its spot, but she had no choice. She packed a bag with a blade and some greens and a cup for rainwater, and said a desperate prayer to the gods of the Green Moon as she wrapped the weak cocoon in her ragged cloak. She breathed in relief when she felt that though the cocoon's walls were thin, they were flexible, and held against her interference. She held him in her arms and stole away through the day.

She ran for miles then walked for more. The sun bore into her brutally, making her eyesight fuzzy and her lungs painful — but she was Porrim Maryam, and she could survive the sunlight.

After more than a perigee of aimless running and near-starvation, she came across a desecrated temple in the desert. Though the gods it worshiped were blasphemous and amphibian, she counted her luck in finding it. She took her bundle into the safety of the darkness and she relished in the sand giving way at last to stone.

Though there were no animals for meat and little natural water, her luck had not yet run out — for she saw, stashed in the bowels of the ruins, a cache of stored goods. The cans were ancient and certainly so were their sustenances, but the food was hardy and still valid. She drank the strange liquid stored in cans and ate the thoroughly salted meat and felt alive again.

For Kankri, she did not know. He still did not stir from his cocoon, nor did the cocoon itself give any indication of when it might crack. She'd felt it stretch and fill while Kankri grew, and now it seemed fit to burst, but still it did not.

She was afraid to wake him prematurely. She'd seen them, the half-wriggler half-child corpses, lying tiny and prostate in cocoons shredded apart by lusii or bloodthirsty children fresh from their trials.

And yet, she had also seen the swollen cocoons, their trolls unable or unwilling to wake, and passing away in their sleep before tasting the world.

He seemed ready. She ran her hand over the contours of the tight cocoon and felt a shoulder through the thin membrane. She followed it down to a hand, twisted over a leg, that had all five fingers. The cocoon rocked with his steady breathing.

She told herself to wait for first spring before taking that gamble.

He still did not wake up.

The moon set and rose each night, casting long shadows against the pink and white sand that stretched past the horizon, and giving away to the gentler green light of Alternia's second moon. Porrim saw no approaching figures and figured she had enough of a head start against the sentries that she need not worry for a season or two. Kankri grew stiller and stiller in his overstuffed cocoon, and Porrim fingered the little tube of lipstick she'd found in the ruins with their rations.

Third winter came to an end and the nights grew shorter with the approach of spring. The damp season came sleepily after the quiet of the dark season, with mild winds and rain coming in from the east. The desert slowly came to life, goldflowers sprouting haphazardly from the dirt deep beneath the sand and prickleplants flowered impressively. An occasional desertbeast darted across the horizon.

One night, when the green moon set and the pink moon began its journey, Porrim began pacing. She thought of what she would do should Kankri die. She could turn herself in, and perhaps avoid the irons in favor of slavery. Seadwellers are ruthless to their slaves, but being a slave is better than being dead.

Alternia's first moon set and Porrim stood over the cocoon, rolling the lipstick between her thumb and forefinger. Kankri wasn't moving anymore. He might've already died in the night.

She uncapped the lipstick.

Her chainsaw roared to life.

She held it above the sleeping boy who was ready to wake.


	2. The Olive

The oliveblood stared in horror at the blood at the foot of the cave. She reeled with a wordless, spinning terror, thinking over and over _no, no, please, not yet, not yet_. The cave was empty. Her lusus was missing, and in its place was a smear of blood the same shade as her own.

The olive was very young, too young to lose her lusus. She couldn't see her life without her, without someone to care for her and feed her and help her live quietly and unassumingly at the edge of civilization.

She was cold, she realized, but she was usually cold. Her lusus used to lick the top of her hair and curl around her when she was cold. Her lusus used to always seem to know when the she would wake up, and would greet her by nuzzling her and wiping the sopor slime from her eyes with a rough tongue. The olive felt something hard in her throat come up from her stomach. She decided to stop thinking about her lusus.

She'd always known there was a danger living this close to the ocean, where The Orphaner's menace reigned over young trolls and their lusii. Yet, she had never expected he would come this far out of the sea — bitterly she chastised this oversight, swallowing the rancid taste of grief down again.

She squeezed her eyes shut to stifle tears, and knelt before the puddle of blood to began to reluctantly pray. If the Orphaner took her lusus, then he fed her to the monstrous Gl'Bgolyb in the deep sea to keep its hunger sated, that it wouldn't send out a psychic scream to kill all the Alternians in the galaxy. She knew it was important that the Gl'Bgolyb remained fed, but she was a child, so she thanked the god sourly for her existence at the cost of her lusus.

The olive stood and turned away from the entrance to the cave. She had to find somewhere else to live. She had to find some other way to live. Now that the Orphaner had robbed her of everything, she needed to learn how to hunt, to forage for food, to mine the naturally occurring sopor from the deep caves beneath the mountain. Everything her lusus had done for her.

She wrung her small hands and looked around, seeking a direction, any direction, to go towards to make everything go away. She looked up at the night sky and sought the pink moon. It was bright tonight. She took a step towards the moon, hesitant, then she took another step and started her trek.


	3. Chapter 2

Kankri was, against all expectations, an ordinary looking troll. His horns were a little underdeveloped — short and rounded and easily hidden in his mass of dark curly hair — but otherwise, he looked to be utterly normal. Dark gray skin, orange eyes with silver irises, two gangly legs and two newly formed arms, all ten fingers and toes accounted for.

After he fell out of his cocoon, Kankri crawled to the corner to shiver. Porrim knelt down next to him and pulled off her cloak, then swept it around him to keep him warm. It was the damp season, first spring; it was wet and cold, with shorter nights and longer days. Without his thick carapace, he was susceptible to the cold; with his hot running blood, he was more susceptible than she.

He would need warmer clothes than her ragged cloak. And for that, she would need fabric, she would need a needle snd thread, she would need things that she did not have the knowledge or skill to make herself. She pulled her mutant into her lap and held him, fearful, feeling inadequate and unable to raise him properly. His little hands pressed against her bodice, and she felt something stir in herself.

They couldn't live in this temple forever, she realized. They would have to go into a town at some point, for food and clothing, and perhaps, if there's money, just a cupful of sopor so she could put a little under her tongue each day to sleep with. Her mouth ached and her head throbbed as she thought of sopor, and her skin crawled still with the ghost of withdrawal.

She spent some nights gathering their meager possessions that had scattered in the temple, bringing Kankri with her. At first Kankri crawled on his hands and knees like a wriggler still, but he soon learned to imitate Porrim and struggled to stand upright. She was surprised at this. Most trolls don't learn to walk for some perigees after their pupation. However, his legs were weak, and though he tried he couldn't take a step.

Porrim would sometimes take a break from gathering, and sit before Kankri, holding up him by his armpits. He would chirp, and take shaky steps towards her. Whenever he got close he would smile this great smile of satisfaction, and it made her laugh. She had never seen a troll this young before. She found it fascinating and oddly delightful.

As delightful as he was, however, he was impractical to forage with. She knew of a few plants that grew in the desert, and she'd hoped to gather as much as she could before they left. Her first night out gathering seeds from the goldflowers that grew with abundance, he crawled behind her, her cloak haphazardly draped over his shoulders. The ground was wet and cold, and he was soon crying when his hands and knees chapped. She stopped and picked him up, rubbing his fingers and toes until they'd warmed, and set him back down. He grabbed her skirt and tried to stand up, the cloak finally falling off him. He lost his balance, and fell on the ground beside it, ripping a piece of her dress. After a moment of bewildered silence, he cried out again. She picked him up, now despairing of getting any work done.

She noticed where he ripped her dress, and had an idea. She set him back down and swaddled him in her cloak, then sat down beside him. She ripped strips off the outer layers of her skirt, and used some to secure him in her cloak, and the rest to tie him to her back. She felt his chin come to rest on her shoulder as she stood.

After that, gathering food was easy, though she tired faster with his weight on her back. Over the next few nights, she worked on this makeshift carrier until it was ideal. All of his extremities were covered and warm when he sat in it, and she fashioned straps so she could remove and replace it at will. She found increasingly that she drew comfort from her quiet companion, that the warmth of his body against hers and the delicate weight of his chin on her shoulder staved off the sharper edge of fear and sleep deprivation. She soon sought the feel of him against her even when it wasn't wholly necessary.

She'd fretted for the some nights on how to carry the drink from the cans in the ruins, for the cans were too bulky and she did not know how to weave anything watertight. One night, however, by sheer luck she came across a desertbeast and killed it. She dragged it back to the cave, and together she and Kankri reveled in their spoils. She cut out its bladder and rinsed it in blood and set it aside to carry their drink. The stomach might have also sufficed, but the creature had eaten something sharp that punctured its stomach. She counted her blessing though, for the sickness caused by the punctured stomach led it to be easy prey for the likes of Porrim.

She didn't have salt to dry out the meat, so she lit a fire and she and Kankri had fresh meat for the first time since leaving the cavern — him, for the first time ever. He watched with cautious eyes as she drank its heavenly blood from its side before skinning it and cutting out its flesh. She had hidden her genetic defect for so long that she had forgotten the heady taste of blood, and that night when she slept, she slept heavy and long without dreams.

They were ready within a few weeks of Kankri's pupation. Porrim had gathered all the food she could carry, and she had a vague plan to head to the coast and seek one of the shantytowns that grew in abundance there. Kankri felt the palpable change that evening when they got up, and was uncharacteristically quiet. Instead of fussing when he woke, he followed Porrim's busy movements with silent, wary eyes.

She carefully placed him in his carrier and pulled it on her back. She tied a bag with the last of their dried meat to her waist along with another bag full of goldflower seeds and prickleplant nuts. She filled the desertbeast's bladder with the drink from the ruins and sowed it clumsily shut with a string she tore from the seam in the bodice of her dress. This she handed to Kankri to hold in his carrier. He took the responsibility with pride, his eyes bright and expression serious.

They left the ruins early in the evening, when the green moon had just began to rise large and dark on the horizon. She sought the constellation of the Furthest Ring, a cluster of bright stars to the east, and followed their direction to the sea.

The drink from the ruins was sugary and thick, so one small swallow could last Porrim the night. Kankri was still leery of the bladder holding their drink, so in the evenings before they set out, Porrim would sit with Kankri in her lap and let him drink from her cupped hand. It rained frequently, and Porrim would collect the rainwater in the same container, so the sugary drink became less and less so, until they only had water, which went faster. This was a worry, but Porrim tried not to let it consume her.

They would stop for food once at midnight, when the pink moon began to rise, and Porrim would talk at Kankri to hear him babble back in a nonsense language. Sometimes he would cry in hunger before then, so Porrim would hand him a seed to suck on, for he could not crack them open with his tiny teeth yet.

He could soon sit on his own. Whenever she sat him down, he would fuss mightily until she propped him up, so that he could assert his skill. He was endlessly fascinated with the changing environment as they drew closer to the coast; he would sit, staring intently at the sky, waiting for a seabird to fly by. When one did, he would crow and clap, then yank on Porrim's dress to make sure she saw it too.

Each passing day grew hotter, and this was another worry, for Kankri had fragile eyes that squinted under the light of the pink moon. Before she allowed herself to even think of sleep, she would dutifully ensure he was properly covered by her cloak and shielded from the sun. In the beginning of their journey, he would wake in the middle of the day and get scared when he couldn't see Porrim, so she began sleeping under her cloak with him.

Her more practical worries were drowned out by an overwhelming fear of discovery; but they never ran into another troll in their entire journey. She figured that her hunters had given up, assuming her dead under the blistering Alternian sun.

After several perigees of travel during which Kankri learned to walk and to say a few words, they saw the ocean on the horizon. The moons glittered blindingly off the waves, and the smell of brine infiltrated everything, clinging to their food, their clothes, their hair and skin. It took two nights to reach the shore.

Neither Kankri nor Porrim had ever seen the sea before, so they both took one night to explore the waves and the sand. Kankri would toddle resolutely to the water whether Porrim was watching or not, so she had to pick him up and put him down farther back a few different times, fearing he would drown. She collected small crabs and hesitantly, after watching birds do the same, cracked them open and picked out the meat inside to eat. The water was too cold to swim in, but Porrim pulled up her skirts to put her feet in the water, and at Kankri's insistence, she held him with his feet in the water too. The two of them searched for shells in the sand and tried to impress each other with the most colorful finds.

The next perigee they walked along the coast, and the damp season ended. The pale season came with first summer, which was dry and full of hot winds coming off the sea. They were running out of water. Porrim desperately rationed the little that was left, but without the rain there was nothing to replace it with. She figured they had perhaps a week, maybe a week and a half if she went without — but the heat coming off the sea sucked the water from her skin, so she sweat out half of what she drank and was always thirsty.

They lasted two weeks. Porrim at last simply let Kankri lick the container to get the last few drops of water, but it wasn't enough. He cried at first, but when that did nothing, he quieted and hung morosely on her back. She was desperate. They were forced to stop several times each night for her to squat and gather her breath again. Her vision blurred and her throat burned with every breath. Kankri seemed to be regressing — he no longer sat up by himself, and he no longer walked. He would just lay heavily wherever she set him. The little he spoke was gone, and instead he was mute and unresponsive to her words.

She at least knew not to drink the seawater. She cursed it, she screamed at it once, but she never let herself dip a hand in even just to feel it on her fingertips. The little Porrim could think through the pounding of her temples, she felt dimly of horror. They were going to die. She saw the Handmaid waiting for them every morning when the last moon set.

The third evening after the last of their water, she woke and couldn't stand up. The sky kept spinning and she couldn't figure out which way was up. She took a stab at it and slipped, and she fell back down, winded, confused. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She couldn't focus enough to tell what that meant, but she knew her time was up. She reached out a hand to Kankri, but he was too far away. She felt like a failure.

She rolled her head to the side to look at him. His eyes were sunken, and his lips were cracked. Maybe she should give him a cupful of ocean water, just to make dying easier with something wet in his mouth.

Behind him was some sort of sparkling fern. She wondered at it for a while, until slowly a realization came to her. Dew. It was covered in dew.

She forced herself up and dragged herself closer. With a shaking hand, she pressed a nail against a dewdrop, watching the water give and cling to her finger. Rain, there had been rain. Almost crying with relief, she thrust her head to the leaf and licked the dew off. She grabbed Kankri and pushed his head against the dewdrops, which he took without asking.

She next worked finding the biggest leaves she could, letting Kankri drink the puddles that had collected in them and gathering them for the morning. She then sat and began setting up the leaves to collect the rain for the next time it came. Kankri felt her excitement and seemed reinvigorated. He crawled to each of the leaves she sat down and touched them curiously.

Porrim covered Kankri for day as usual, but stayed awake, waiting dizzily for the rain to come and save them. She waited the long hours as the sun climbed the horizon, growing large and hot and close. She waited even as it began to set, feeling like a coal had dropped into her stomach when the rain still didn't come. She refused to accept the dew as a singular occurrence, she refused to accept that Kankri might wake up and still not have enough to drink.

Or if not, she thought listlessly, he might at least die in his sleep dreaming that there will still be a tomorrow.

When the sun hovered low and angry on the horizon, the clouds in the sky an inflamed red, Porrim finally gave up. She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them, exhausted in too many ways. She thought belatedly that maybe she should have tried praying, or sacrificing something, to the gods of the Furthest Ring. Or to the Gl'Bgolyb. Or even maybe to the Empress — they say she had the power to extend a life with her touch alone.

Just as her despair peaked, something wet touched her cheek. It was warm, so at first she thought it was a tear — but another drop hit her hand, and she looked up. The red clouds were heavy with rain, and beginning to empty. The leaves around her were already collecting water, small puddles forming in their depths.

When Kankri woke, he woke to the sound Porrim tipping water into their container. There were tears streaming from her eyes in relief, but as he didn't know the difference between joy and sadness, he began to cry.

"No, no no, don't cry — " Porrim crooned, scooping him up and showing him their water. "We're saved! Look, drink some!" She pressed the container to his lip and he drank, hesitantly, then thirstily, reviving himself.

That night the two of them simply sat and drank and rejoiced in living again. Kankri bounced back from the threshold of death, beginning to sit and stand on his own again, repeating Porrim's words and inventing his own. Porrim began teaching him what she knew of Old Alternian, the language of the highbloods, finding it ironic.

"Sea," she'd say.

"See!" He'd reply enthusiastically.

 _"Haf,"_ she'd say again, in the Old language.

 _"Hav!"_

"Bird."

"Birt!"

 _"Svanr."_

 _"Svaner!"_

Not even a perigee passed yet, when Porrim saw the shape on the horizon.

Kankri was walking alongside her when she saw it. She grabbed him and pulled him into the shade of marshweeds, and hissed at him to sit and be silent. She crouched low, squinting against the moon, to make sense of the shape. If she was unlucky, a hulking coalition of cerulean bounty hunters would be waiting just a mile away to kill Kankri and put her in irons. If she was lucky, infinitely lucky, then three miles away would lie a little town.

She pulled her cloak from where it was tied to her back, and drew it around herself. She picked up Kankri, who was trembling with surprise and fear, and pulled him against her chest. She stroked his cheek and tried to murmur something soothing. Holding him protectively beneath her cloak, she crept forward, straining to make sense of the shadow against the horizon. She struggled to make out shapes of trolls.

She inched closer. The shape loomed higher and sprawled out. She recognized the form of hivestems stacked up to the sky, and she breathed out with relief.

She sat, and loosened her hold on Kankri, who still clung to her. "My little one, we've done it, we've made it," she said to him, breathless with release.

He twisted in her arms to look at the shape. At once he let out a bubbly laugh. "Town!" he said.

"Yes, town!" She jumped up still holding him, so that he laughed again. "There will be all sorts of exotic food, not just crabs and weeds anymore — there'll be candies and fish and sweet drinks!"

"Down!" he instructed, and once she put him down, he began toddling determinedly to the town. She laughed and followed his lead, and the two of them headed to the town with more hope than they'd left with.

It was a small port town, with only a thin fence marking the northern limit. Ragged hives piled four or five wobbly stories high were clustered around a small but bustling town square, and on the eastern edge of the town was a rickety trading port where several ancient ships were moored and several ornery captains argued with their pilots.

Before getting too close to the town, Porrim took Kankri to the side. "Once we see other trolls, you are not to make a sound, you are to hide in my cloak. Do you understand?"

He looked at her dolefully. She picked him up and held him on her hip, then drew her cloak around them, ensuring he was entirely hidden. His head came to rest on her chest.

She entered the town with a great deal of anxiety, not just for the illegal child she held under her cloak, but also for the ordeal of interacting with other trolls. Her own small world for the past sweep had been just Kankri, and for the fifteen sweeps before that her world had been the even smaller society of scathing jadeblood politics. The only trolls she had seen outside her caste were grubs.

Rustbloods congregated around the outer edge of the city, jabbering to each other with heavy accents Porrim couldn't decipher. Brownbloods had set up makeshift carts and were selling wares of dubious value, amulets, good-luck tokens, broken bits of machinery they all swore still worked. Still, the town was mostly comprised of yellowbloods, as most port towns were. They held the monopoly in the main square, advertising everything from ocean fruits to nighttime company. Porrim adjusted her hold on Kankri, and searched for an inn of some kind.

Most of the trolls she attempted to talk to ignored her, dismissing her as a penniless beggar for the way she was dressed in rags.

A toothless brownblood gestured to Porrim from her place between to stalls. She had a threadbare cloth stretched over the ground before her, from where she was selling fabric and thread. Porrim approached her apprehensively.

"You look like you could do with some cloth to fix those holes in your dress, eh?" She said, eyeing the tears Porrim had made at the hem of her dress

After the perigees of travel and after many a trial and error on making rudimentary underclothes for Kankri to last him until she taught him to use a load gaper, the outer layer of her dress was nearly all that remained. Her petticoat had been reduced to scraps, and the inner layers of her dress she'd long since given up to keep Kankri warm when he slept. Porrim eyed the woman's wares, and nodded hesitantly.

The woman waved her closer, so Porrim knelt down, holding carefully onto Kankri, who squirmed a little as she moved. The woman picked up a length of deep green cloth. "Pretty, isn't it? Wouldn't this look nicely with your eyes!" She held out the cloth, and in the light the fabric shimmered slightly.

Kankri saw the fabric through a gap in Porrim's cloak. Mesmerized, he reached out to touch it.

Porrim gasped and pulled away, yanking Kankri back into her cloak. The woman, however, just cackled. "Look at that! Growing your own slave from scratch? It's no wonder you look like you've been to the Furthest Ring and back."

"I'm sorry — I didn't — "

"Save it for the Empress greenie. Here," she said, pulling open Porrim's cloak and handing Kankri the shimmery fabric. He grabbed it delightedly and bit the edge. The woman laughed.

"Thank you," Porrim said, straightening up, as she pulled out her money bag. "Can I give you five caegars?"

The woman's smile slid off her face. "That's all you've got? I'll need fifteen, at least."

Porrim dug through her bag. "I have ten."

The woman sighed. "Fine." She held out her hand expectantly, and Porrim counted out ten coins for her.

Porrim carried Kankri to a quiet alley out of the bustle of the main square. She set him on one of the crates stacked against the side of one of the buildings. The edge of the fabric was now soaked through with his drool. Porrim laughed a little, before tugging it from his mouth.

"We need this, my love!" She stopped. She hadn't intended on calling him that. She had never called another troll her love before. Porrim, you fool, are you pale for an infant? She lectured herself.

Kankri cocked his head curiously. "Pour im?"

She unfolded the fabric and examined it, trying to figure out how much of her dress it could replace. She smiled, seeing how long it was, and she happily bounced Kankri who was grabbing at the fabric.

"Yes, this will do nicely! What do you think? Will I be able to make a new dress, or will my old one suffice until I'm running around naked?"

He laughed. "Naked!"


	4. The Mustard

The mustardblood shivered in the cold twilight air. The Green Moon was low against the horizon, and he watched it struggle to rise and end the oppressive day. The wagon he was riding hit a rut, jerking to a stop. The driver swore, getting out of his spot in the front to inspect the trapped wheel.

A brownblood in the wagon across from the mustard whimpered, his head tucked between his legs, his sharp little horns poking at his knees. A rustblood was muttering something in an accent that no one could understand.

There were twelve of them, all children, stuffed into this little wagon. All their lusii had been culled at some point or another, leaving them rabid and wild and fending for themselves. Some kind of greenblood, probably olive, had gathered them to sell at the marketplace, when the wheel hit a rut. The mustard wasn't sure if he should count his blessings or curse them.

A horse-drawn coach rattled down the same narrow lane, and their driver hailed down the newcomer. "You there, I broke a spoke. Do you have any spare — " he broke off when he saw that the coach contained three primly-dressed seadwellers, staring coldly down at him. The driver nearly fell over dropping into a low bow, apologizing profusely.

The mustard craned his head to get a better look at the seadwellers — he'd never seen one before. Though they were all swaddled warmly to resist the dry air on land, he could still see their delicately finned ears poking out of their hair.

"What are you doing out this early?" one of the seadwellers asked, a note of repressed disdain in her voice.

"I — I'm just transporting some child-slaves to our local market, milady."

"Marquise," the seadweller corrected tersely. The driver, again, apologized liberally.

The seadwellers conferred quietly with each other, stealing glances at the driver and the wagon. They caught sight of the mustardblood, who whipped his head back into the wagon, heart beating fast.

"Let's see your wares," the Marquise said finally, standing and exiting her coach, the other two seadwellers following closely.

The driver swallowed, but nodded and turned to his wagon. He fumbled a little with the latch, then hissed at the children to line up and stay quiet.

The mustard and his companions followed the driver's instructions mutely, lining up in a neat row before the seadwellers. The mustard kept his eyes down, staring hard at his feet while the seadwellers paced among them.

"This one has strong horns, he'd surely make a great jouster," one of the seadwellers murmured to the Marquise.

The Marquise shook her head. "Look at those skinny arms. He wouldn't be good for much more than feeding some cerulean's lusus."

The third seadweller paused in front of the mustard, scrutinizing him. He still refused to look up. "Midblood, make this one with four horns look up at me. I want to check his eyes."

The driver nodded, then grabbed one of the mustard's horns and yanked his head up. The seadweller's mouth split into a smile.

"One blue eye and one red eye — a psionic! And I thought you were rounding up slaves." The seadweller turned to his companions, and said, "Wouldn't he look nice on our ship?"

The other two seadwellers laughed, and the mustard felt a chill travel down his spine.

Before his lusus had been culled, he used to live in a little hive with a tiny stash of picture books. One of the books, _The Big Trip_ , told the story of three young highbloods flying for the first time on a ship. Most of the books on Alternia only featured highblood characters, but this one had a picture of a mustardblood — just like him. The mustardblood in the book was the pilot of the ship, and the three highbloods get to see her when they were looking around the main deck.

The pilot didn't get to speak. The pilot couldn't move. The pilot was strapped into the ship, wrapped in grotesque wires that poked into her red and blue eyes. She was exhausted, hanging from her arms, smoke rising from her eyes. The book said, _"The pilot of the ship is a mustardblood with special psychic powers. She uses those powers to push the ship through space. Every couple of sweeps, the ship gets a new pilot when the old one burns out. This pilot, however, is right in the prime of her career! She'll be able to push the ship through space with no problem."_

The Mustard forced bile back down his throat. He could almost feel the prick of wires already.

And as he should. After all, it was his destiny. It was in his blood.


End file.
